Apple devices phoning home led to the arrest of Steve Jobs’ home burglar

Earlier today, reports confirmed that Steve Jobs’ house in California was burglarized and over $60,000 worth of goods was stolen from the residence. The list of stolen items includes some very expensive jewelry, two iMacs, three iPads, one Apple TV, a Sodastream soda and a wallet belonging to Jobs himself, says a report in The Daily.

A homeless man was arrested for the theft after he plugged in the Apple devices and they phoned home to Apple’s Cupertino campus looking for updates. Once the devices connected to Apple’s servers, it wasn’t too hard for police to find the location of the stolen goods. Thought the report doesn’t say how the devices were tracked, all recent Apple devices have location tracking software like Find my iPad or Find My Mac installed by default.

When they arrived, the police found Kariem McFarlin, a 35-year-old homeless man, with stolen goods in his possession. The man said he was desperate and had no idea he was robbing Steve Jobs’ house, which was vacant while undergoing renovation. Once he discovered what he had done, McFarlin sent the jewelry off to an out-of-state dealer and plugged in the Apple hardware, presumably to test whether they work and/or extract information from the devices. His proverbial curiosity is what ended up killing the cat (or capturing the criminal, in this case).